Diwali in Silicon Valley

Brightly colored festival gift displays at major retail stores and poor air quality in Silicon Valley are reminding Indian-Americans this year of Diwali celebrations at home.

Big box retailers like Costco know their customers. Merchandizers working for them are stocking up their local Silicon Valley stores with products most in demand before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, to cater to a sizable population of Indian-Americans in the Valley. A variety of Indian mithais (sweets) and spicy snacks are on display at major mainstream retail stores that are competing with the traditional Indian supermarkets for business. Stores like Costco are now also carrying raw or prepared daals, rice, vegetables, flour, naans and chapatis.

Diwali Gift Display at a Silicon Valley Costco

Adding to the ambiance is the particulate matter from multiple major forest fires in the San Francisco Bay Area that are still not under control after several days of fire fighting. Tragically, the fires have so far claimed 40 precious lives and many are still missing. The air quality in the Bay Area has also suffered. The Bay Area air with PM2.5 of 155 micrograms per cubic meter is now being compared to what Indians in Delhi (153 micrograms per cubic meter) have to breathe in normal times and it gets a lot worse during Diwali fireworks.

India's pollution problems are not entirely due to poorly controlled industry and transport. The early winter problems are significantly exacerbated by the burning of the fields by farmers after harvest.

In the overall rankings based on 22 policy indicators, India finds itself ranked at 125 among the bottom ten environmental laggards such as Yemen, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq while Pakistan ranks slightly better at 120. The indicators used for this ranking are in ten major policy categories including air and water pollution, climate change, boidiversity, and forest management.

The Yale-Columbia study confirms that environmental problems in South Asia are growing rapidly. The increasing consumption by rapidly growing population is depleting natural resources, and straining the environment and the infrastructure like never before. Soil erosion, deforestation, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and land and water degradation are all contributing to it.

It's important to remember that Bhopal still remains the worst recorded industrial accident in the history of mankind. As India, Pakistan and other developing nations vie for foreign direct investments by multi-national companies seeking to set up industries to lower their production costs and increase their profits, the lessons of Bhopal must not be forgotten.

It is the responsibility of the governments of the developing countries to legislate carefully and enforce strict environmental and safety standards to protect their people by reversing the rapidly unfolding environmental degradation. Public interest groups, NGOs and environmental and labor activists must press the politicians and the bureaucrats for policies to protect the people against the growing environmental hazards stemming from growing consumption and increasing global footprint of large industrial conglomerates.

There will be severe health consequences for all Indians unless the Modi government acts to legislate and regulate various sources of pollution in the country. Pakistan government, too, needs to act to prevent severe harm to public health by rising pollution.

NEW DELHI — The sweets usually fly off the shelves during the Hindu festival of Diwali, but this year, only a handful of passersby stopped by. Idle employees waited around to take down orders while the neatly piled towers of shimmering confections waited for a customer.

Famed in Delhi's Chandni Chowk market, Kanwarji Bhagirathmal is one of many small businesses in Delhi where sales have slowed. “This time last year, there was a rush of people standing in front of the shop,” said Rachit Gupta, who runs the sweet shop. “People who were spending 1,000 rupees ($15) last year are spending 600-700 now ($9-$11).”

In the past year, India’s economic performance has fallen short of expectations. The shock of major economic changes has caused panic and confusion, leaving some small businesses like Gupta’s with slower sales than in past years.

“If food is something people are willing to forgo, then I’m not sure what’s happening to others,” he said.

The downturn is especially bitter because of the promises Prime Minister Narendra Modi made when he came to power in 2014. Chiding his predecessor Manmohan Singh, an Oxford-educated economist who oversaw the economic liberalization of India in the 1990s, Modi presented himself as a financial genius who presided over the state of Gujarat throughout years of boom. He spoke of his own rise from a streetside tea seller as a personal economic miracle, promising jobs for the young and a new focus on manufacturing to take on neighboring China.

But Modi’s promises have gone unfulfilled. Growth slumped to a three-year low from April to June, just 5.7 percent. Job creation has stagnated, leaving millions without work.

In November 2016, Modi made a surprise announcement declaring 86 percent of India’s cash defunct, saying the process of replacing the country’s paper money, also known as demonetization, would do away with untaxed stacks of “black money.” Just afterward, the queues outside Gupta’s shop vanished entirely. “I didn’t see people coming for days,” he said.

In July, a new goods and services tax was introduced, but there has been confusion over its implementation. The tax replaced varied state taxes and consolidates India’s economy into a single market for the first time, and it resulted in a price hike for items and services. Gupta, like many traders in Chandni Chowk, still doesn’tknow how much tax to charge. He said even his accountant didn’t know. “If the people at the top don't know what’s happening,” he said, “then how will people lower down the ladder know what to do?”

Like many Hindu festivals, there isn’t just one reason to celebrate the five-day holiday. Pankaj Jain, a professor of anthropology, philosophy, and religion at the University of North Texas, says that the ancient celebration is linked to multiple stories in religious texts, and it’s impossible to say which came first, or how long ago Diwali started.

Many of these stories are about the triumph of good over evil. In northern India, a common tale associated with Diwali is about King Rama, one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. When an evil Sri Lankan king captures Rama’s wife Sita, he “builds up an army of monkeys” to rescue her, Jain says.

The monkeys “build a bridge over from India to Sri Lanka, and they invade Sri Lanka and free Sita and kill that evil king,” he says. As Rama and Sita return to the north, “millions of lights are spread out across the city Ayodhya just to help them come back home, just to welcome them.” Lighting lamps has long been one of the ways that Hindus celebrate Diwali.

In the south, Diwali is popularly linked to a story about the Hindu god Krishna, a different incarnation of Vishnu, in which he frees some 16,000 women from another evil king. In the western state of Gujarati, the New Year coincides with Diwali (there are multiple New Years throughout India), and Diwali is associated with asking the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity in the coming year. During the festival, many celebrants exchange gifts and coins.

Other religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism use Diwali to mark important events in their histories, too. Professor Jain, who is petitioning one of Texas’ school districts to recognize Diwali, says that while Diwali is a religious holiday, it’s also somewhat of a national holiday in India. Comparing it to Christmas in the U.S., he points out that many non-Christians in America still buy a Christmas tree and give each other gifts.

By 11 pm, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee's (DPCC) RK Puram monitoring station started showing PM2.5 and PM10 at 878 and 1,179 micrograms per cubic metre, 10 times beyond the safety limits. According to the SAFAR or System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research, the 24-hour rolling average of PM2.5 and PM10 were 154 and 256 micrograms per cubic metre respectively at around 11 pm.

----------------As the Diwali evening progressed, celebrations seemed pretty low-key this year. There were only faint sounds of crackers bursting and fireworks. Air pollution levels also seemed to be under control. For quite some time it appeared as if the Supreme Court's ban on sale of crackers was showing its impact. However, what appeared to be a quieter Diwali only a few hours ago soon changed with the incessant bursting of crackers. Rapid deterioration of the air quality started from roughly around 7 pm and reports mention that the online indicators of the pollution monitoring stations showed Delhi suffering 'very poor' air quality on Diwali night.

A 'very poor' air quality index (AQI) essentially means that people may suffer from respiratory illnesses on a prolonged exposure to such air. If the air quality deteriorates further, even healthy people with no respiratory conditions are going to be affected.

The air in Delhi is more toxic than what human lungs can deal with. And Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has blamed it on crop burning in neighbouring states. He tweeted, “We have to find a solution to crop burning in adjoining states.” But have we done anything substantial to find a solution?

Well, it seems Pakistan is doing better than India when it comes to controlling crop burning.

This year, according to reports, 2,620 incidents of crop fire were spotted via satellite in Indian Punjab. In Pakistan, the number was limited to just 27.

Now Pakistan is blaming India for causing an “incursion of smoke”. According to a report in Dawn, the Punjab Environment Department (EPD) has requested the federal government to approach Indian authorities on the pollution issue. They say it has caused smog in different cities of the province, including Lahore. “Crop stubble is also being burnt in our cities but the present and the expected level of burning on the Indian side is alarming,” an EPD official told Dawn.

While Pakistan’s Punjab area stretches to 205,344 km2 with a population of 11 crore, India’s is far less. The Punjab area in India is about 50,362 km2 and the population is 2.7 crore.

Though the problem of crop burning has existed in both the countries for decades, it seems Pakistan has been able to tackle it far better than India.

In 2014, Pakistan wasn’t very far from India when it came to the problem of crop burning. Lahore, along with New Delhi, was listed amongst the top 10 worst cities for smog in that year.

A satellite image from November 2015 by ISRO showed that Pakistan had a near same incidence of farm fires a couple of years ago. Mohan Guruswamy, the chairperson for the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Delhi, pointed this out on Facebook.

These maps show that crop burning has reduced massively in Pakistan’s part of Punjab.

Meanwhile, in India, we are still struggling.

India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT) has pulled up Punjab government, saying that even after “two years of being asked to come up with an action plan, they have not done much.”

The bench has asked if Captain Amarinder Singh-led government can produce a single farmer from Punjab before them who can say the government gave him any kind of assistance to stop crop burning.

The farmers in Punjab and Haryana say there is no affordable alternative to stubble burning. “I will set fire to my farm to clear it. If need be, I will pay the fine because there is no other option,” Jitendra Singh, a farmer told News18.

Farmers have to clear the fields and ready them for the winter crop in the window between kharif harvest and rabi planting. The window is of 20 days. The highly mechanized agriculture makes the input costs very high. Naturally, pollution is the last thing on their mind.

A fine of Rs 2,500 per acre can be levied if a farmer is caught burning his farm. But that is very little compared to the cost of any alternative method.

Time for us to take a leaf out of Pakistan’s book?

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Koshish Foundation, an organization funded primarily by NED University Alumni in Silicon Valley, helped fund Koshish Foundation Research Lab (KFRL) in Karachi back in 2014. It has since received additional funding from numerous national and international organizations including DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service. The lab has been renamed RCAI- Research Center For Artificial…